


The Man Who Saved A World

by Tolpen



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Aferlife, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Domestic Activities As a Mean of Comfort, Gen, Mostly Dialogue, afterlife is dram-bubbles based, philosophic-theological musing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2020-08-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:55:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25865515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tolpen/pseuds/Tolpen
Summary: Myriel finds Valjean in the afterlife and proves to him that saving oneself is more than enough.
Relationships: Charles-François-Bienvenu Myriel & Jean Valjean
Comments: 11
Kudos: 10
Collections: Sewerchat Anniversary Exchange 2020





	The Man Who Saved A World

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nuizlaziai](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nuizlaziai/gifts).



“Allow me to ask you again for clarification, Your Ex-”

“Charles, dear brother. Simply and plainly Charles, for we all are equal in the eyes of the almighty God.”

“- Charles: I have died.”

The old man nodded with a smile: “That indeed you have, my dearest brother. Your spirit has indeed departed from the valley of tears which we call life.”

“And now I am in your home. But it is not your home, but only a dream of your home.”

“That is the inaccurate simplification which is the most easy to understand, yes.”

Jean Valjean had the feeling that Bishop Myriel considers him to be most dense. “Is this the Heaven?”

Myriel put down the last piece of cutlery he had been washing, and answers only after a long moment of thoughtful silence: “That, brother Jean, is up to you to decide. For now it is not the Hell, for that is the absence of the God. In life you have accepted Him in your mind, but here you have to accept him in your heart. The God is present in all there is; in the breath of the wind, in every song sung, in the warmth of the sun, in the deer running across the grasslands, in me, and in you. To accept God you must accept yourself.”

“In me? How could the God be present in me? I am nothing but a convict! The mere thought is absurd. Many would even say heretic!”

“Perhaps they would, and perhaps they would not. Now go to sleep, Jean Valjean, my beloved brother. For one eve I have plagued you with too many heavy thoughts.”

_For Valjean the memory of the house was covered in fog of rage and desperation with carpets of sadness. He remembered exactly where the bedroom was, the silver, the candlesticks, the back door to the little garden. This place knew night only when Myriel remembered night._

_Mostly the house was drowned in the grey light of the day just before sunrise._

“I find your story the most amazing of its kind. What you have done for that town goes well beyond mayoral obligation. Ah, thank you for the watering cans. They are not too heavy, but you are a stronger man than I am.”

“In body perhaps.” Valjean waters the newly planted patch of rosebay, not too much and not too little.

“You are a kind man. Kindness is more than admirable strength of the spirit.” Myriel looked up briefly from where he was kneeling and digging a new place in the soil for yet another plant.

“Not always in my life I had been kind.”

“Kindness is a choice. In a world that treats you as unkindly as it did, choosing kindness is the greatest strength of all. Be kind to yourself, Jean.

They spent more hours in the garden while the afternoon sun leaned its warmth onto their hunched backs, as Myriel remembered gardening in hot afternoons, and the Heaven was a place of dreams and memory. With soil behind his fingernails Jean Valjean wondered what would a place made out of his memories look like. He was glad that Myriel took him in upon arrival, for the thought of solitude in his dream and memory filled him with dread.

“I adore your garden,” Valjean said after a while. “It is perhaps the greatest thing I have ever seen to come from the hands of a man.”

“The greatest thing to ever come out of my hands was the gesture of peace I gave upon you, Jean.”

_There was a liberating feeling in the latest days. It began with finding spare pieces of wood which Valjean the carved into all manner of shapes in the last remnants of daylight. He found happines in that simple work. Oft Myriel would sit by him and watch with the curiosity of a child. And Valjean felt proud of himself for bringing a wonder into the days of that man who loved him as a brother._

“This shall be our last supper together, Jean. There is nothing here for you to support your growth any longer.”

Valjean stopped in motion as he was setting the table. “Do you want me to leave?”

“I do not want that. I rejoice in your company. But it is time you made this place your own. It is me leaving you,” Myriel explained and sat down the pot of cabbage soup.

They ate in silence, and only when Valjean was putting the clean dishes away he asked: “Charles, was it worth it?”

The little man smiled, and he had such a nice smile: “What do you mean?”

“Saving me. A man who did not want to be saved, who did not expect anything kind nor gentle in his life and in his death.”

“All I gave you, Valjean, was my hearth, and lousy material possession the worth of which was only a social agreement. I gave you nothing, and you saved yourself and many others. You answer the question in my stead: Was it worth it?”

Valjean remembered Cosette, the child that spent her early years in rags and soot and grew up to be the strongest of women he knew.

Myriel put a hand on his shoulder. “All are equal in the eyes of the god. Everyone is worthy of saving. If you saved at least one person in your life, then it was a life worth living. All the better if that person was your self. And you saved many, Jean Valjean.”

“I have not saved enough.”

“Neither have I, my brother. Neither have I. Know that I love you, wherever your steps take you.”

They embraced each other and shed many tears, happy to have each other and saddened that their ways were to part.

“I shall visit you, Charles.”

“Nothing would bring me greater joy than to see you again.”

_He found that house drowned in moonlight, with its garden overgrown and two burning candles in silver candlesticks in the window of the master bedroom. The hidden gate in the back street was nearly missed under the cover of ivy, and it did not make a sound when Valjean opened it. He knew that this was his home._

The change came to him unexpected in the shape of a sodden Herculean task.

“Allow me to ask you again for clarification... Um.”

“Jean. Simply Jean.”

“Yes. Jean. I have died.” The cup, now devoid of tea, was put back on the table by shaking hands.

“That you indeed have.”

“And now I am in a memory of your house.”

Valjean added more wood to the fire as he said: “That is an oversimplified and somewhat inaccurate description, but it is a truth in a form which is easy to understand, yes.”

Bafflement: “Why?”

“Because I believe, Inspector, that everyone is worthy of saving from themselves.”


End file.
